Taxpayers' Alliance - The Why and The Wherefore

Those who look in on the website of the so-called Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA), the grassroots equivalent of the Peoples' Front of Judaea, may have noticed that the output of knocking copy aimed at Government - any Government - has fallen recently, although there are still regular attempts to pretend knowledge of jobs merely from job titles, and lectures on economics.

But the less than stellar array of non-job holders has not been idle: at least two of them have decided to come down from their lofty perch at 55 Tufton Street and author content for the Huffington Post UK. Given that I have also featured at that site, I can have no complaint: one cannot object to free dissenting speech. But the TPA should not need to be there.

After all, although it is an Astroturf lobby group and no more, the TPA gets its copy in the papers - well, the Express, Mail, Telegraph and Sun at least - and its talking heads, well presented and on-message, are always willing to appear on camera, at least when the opportunity is in central London. They would appear not to need the HuffPost.

Moreover, the two who have thus far turned up, Matthew Sinclair and Emma Boon, have received a less than rapturous reception, garnering many comments, with most of those commenting hostile. In Sinclair's case, this is hardly surprising, given his aggressive stance towards teachers, every one of whom makes a more significant contribution to public life than he is likely ever to do.

So why are they doing it? Ah well. The TPA's own website appears not to be generating as much traffic and feedback as they would like, and even there a number of commenters are given to demonstrating their resistance to the product on offer. So Sinclair and Boon have ventured out onto the HuffPost to try and "leverage" it to their advantage. I applaud their tenacity, even if I reject much of the TPA's quack doctory.